Want Facebook friends, become a writer

I recently completed my third book, “Mnemosyne: A Love Affair with Memory,” and have bought into the idea of using social media to promote my book. I’ve established a wordpress account where my website and blogs are launched. The information is automatically sent to my social media accounts — facebook, linkedin, and twitter — where it is available to all of my connections, or as facebook calls them, “friends.”

I need friends, lots and lots of friends, if I am to benefit from social media. Okay, so how do I find friends? My best friend is my wife, Paula, but you can’t facebook with your wife. My other friend is my dog, Bailey. I’ve always needed a dog for a friend. Lets see, I’ve had Nippy, Trixie, Friskie, Sam, P.J., Maggie, Maxie, and I now have Bailey. But that’s only one friend and they don’t do facebook. So, how do I find lots of friends?

It has turned out to be quite easy for a writer to find facebook friends who happen to be writers. Here’s how it works. Writers work in isolation, and are continually depressed — can’t find a publisher. If you do find a publisher, only a few buy your book. One buys your book and loans it to another, who loans it to another, and so on. OMG. Why don’t people see what they’re doing? You work threes years to write your book, and they continue to loan it out. One book could be loaned out to 100 people and you’ve sold one book. So, in order to sell a lot of books, I need loads of friends.

Now I’ve established the fact that writers have few to no friends. They are lonely, and if the truth be known, they would like to have a friend. My first step was to find a facebook friend who happens to be a writer. Not hard, there’s a lot of us out there. My first attempt was successful, and much to my surprise, the writer friend had a writer friend who had a writer friend, and so on. I have all of these writers who want to be my friend. In a short time, I have accumulated 337 facebook friends, and I bet that 90% are writers. I’m getting so many friends that facebook wanted to know why I’m contacting so many friends. I explained that I just want more friends. They put me on a seven day suspension where I can’t add any new friends for seven days. Bummer!!

Now that my suspension is over I’m ready to find some more friends. My book is out and now I’m waiting for my 337 friends to buy my book. I continue to check my sales which at best seem stagnant. But wait, what am I doing? Writers don’t have any money. How can they afford to buy my books? And if a writer friend buys one book and loans it to a non-writer friend who loans it to another to another and so on, what will I do?

So, I’ve decided that it’s not about selling books. It’s about the rush I get when I write a good phrase, a paragraph, a few chapters, and finally a good book. That is one big rush that lasts a lifetime. Now what do I do with all of my facebook friends who happen to be writers? We’ll share stories, talk about the craft, and lend our support. And then we’ll feel sorry for those have never experienced the rush. You can’t buy the rush, or loan it out to another, another, and so on. Hmmmm… I think that I’ll just enjoy the rush.